“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Assassin’s Deed: My Stage Debut as President Donald Trump
Cast as President Donald Trump against a nefarious plot of international intrigue, something scarier than Kim Jong Un lurked backstage: the Trumpian hairpiece!
Cast as President Donald Trump against a nefarious plot of international intrigue, something scarier than Kim Jong Un lurked backstage: the Trumpian hairpiece!
October 23, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae
Disclaimer: The following post was first published at Beyond These Stone Walls in August, 2018. It should not be construed today as an endorsement of any political candidate, real or imagined, nor should it be seen as the promotion of any political party. It is simply about a memorable time in an otherwise strange and uneventful existence in the strangest of places.
Back in 2018, I was invited by a newly formed prison theater group to attend a rehearsal for its first stage production in the hope that I might write about it. I walked into the group an innocent bystander and walked out a cast member — THE cast member. This is that story, first presented midway in President Donald Trump’s first term in office.
The script was not written by me, a fact for which, as you will see, I am eternally grateful. It was rather a team effort from a group of creative prisoners who formed the Theater Group in which I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member. In light of more recent events, I am a bit wary about the play’s title. I do not have the power to change it, but it does serve as a reminder about the potential cost of democracy.
It is now our “BTSW Pre-election Special”. I hope it brings a much needed smile and perhaps even some laughter — though please, not in Kamala Harris style — at this otherwise tense and divisive time. I hope you enjoy this unforgettable plot.
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“With the road to Comicon littered with death, one thing is certain: Mom’s van will never be the same!”
Amanda Foreman had a stand-out column in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Literature Behind Bars” (“Historically Speaking,” July 14-15, 2018). If you cannot view it without a subscription, here’s the gist. It’s a brief literary survey of the most profound prison writing spanning the centuries. “Prison writings are about suffering and endurance,” Ms. Foreman wrote. “The spirit remains free, even when the body is in bondage.”
Ms. Foreman presented examples, some of which will be familiar to the readers of Beyond These Stone Walls. She wrote that “modern prison writing came into its own during the Reformation when large numbers of educated people were incarcerated as being enemies of the state.”
Saint Thomas More comes to mind, but Amanda Foreman cited another, the English poet Richard Lovelace. His poem, “To Althea from Prison” was composed in London’s Gatehouse prison in 1642. Today it graces “A Voice for the Voiceless,” a recent review of this blog:
“Stone walls do not a Prison make,
Nor iron bars a Cage.
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such Liberty.”
Prison writers who have endured the tests of both prison and time include Saint Paul whose Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians were written from prison around 62 AD. Others are Russian author and political prisoner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nazi-era Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, American Jesuit priest and Soviet prisoner, Father Walter Ciszek, South African Apartheid resistor, Nelson Mandela, and most recently the great George Cardinal Pell. As Amanda Foreman described,
“The tradition of prison literature as a source of hope and inspiration — for writers and readers alike — continues in our own time.”
Life Imitates Art
Even in the worst Soviet gulags, stories like the one I am about to tell emerged as prisoners discovered their creativity and used it to transcend walls of oppression and despair. I have encountered some amazing creativity in the place where I live. One young man whom I have known for a long time is Jim Parker, age 32. Sent to prison at 17, he is today devoted to atoning for his offense by turning tragedy into triumph.
While so many young prisoners descended into the lure of a prison gang culture, Jim took another path. He has earned Bachelors and Masters degrees in prison without a dime of taxpayer funds. He has mastered several musical instruments and has become an accomplished playwright and producer. His most recent production was a collaborative writing effort and one that was — there’s no other way to put it— either creative genius or bizarre chaos. I’ll let you decide!
Jim gathered six prisoner-writers to compose six short plays. He and the group then melded the six into a single script. While it was still untitled, Jim began to gather potential actors and stage hands to afternoon rehearsals in the prison gymnasium. As this endeavor grew over several months, I asked Jim if I could attend a rehearsal, interview some of the cast, and write about it.
Jim spoke with the cast and they were all in agreement. So he added me to the endeavor as “press agent.” I attended my first stage rehearsal in early March, 2018. While I was watching this amazing creation unfold, Jim said, “We haven’t found someone willing to play a lead character in the script.”
The entire cast stared at me. Jim played me like a fiddle (which is one of the instruments he has mastered). Defying my instinct to get up and flee, I made the fatal mistake of asking Jim the identity of the uncast character. Jim said, “We need an older articulate gentleman to play [are you sitting down?] President Donald Trump.”
Articulate? Gentleman? Putting the irony aside, I was thus drafted to play the Leader of the Free World in a political satire opposite Kim Jong Un of North Korea. This was by no means a partisan affair. All I could say was what President Trump himself might have said:
“This is going to be H-U-G-E! The best play E-V-E-R! We are going to make American drama GREAT again! We are going to transcend a wall, and the best part…? We are going to get North Korea to pay for it!”
“What was I thinking?” I asked myself later that night as I pondered facing two months of daily rehearsals in the prison gym after a full day at work in the prison law library where I studied up on how to defend myself if Donald Trump sued me for a shoddy portrayal. Then I was given a copy of the script — 37 pages of the most incomprehensible and outrageous plot I have ever encountered. “He only has a few lines,” Jim insisted.
Trump appeared twelve times throughout this play, delivered a multitude of speeches in typical Trumpian style and, in the end, saved the world. The photo below is of the entire cast and crew. I am in a dark shirt with Pornchai Moontri in the center and our friend, J.J. Jennings between us. Pornchai and J.J. were part of the construction crew that built the stage and props. After the photo begins a capsule summary of the plot with photos scattered throughout.
The Stage
Before production got underway, Joshua Budgett, an accomplished carpenter who lives with us, designed a magnificent stage. He put his degree in Engineering to work on the design. It was composed of twenty interlocking four-by-four sections that could be dismantled and stored for future productions. Josh Budgett’s stage design is a work of art that will last for decades.
All the wood for the stage was donated, and prisoners also donated their time to build the various components. Several prisoners, including our friend Pornchai Moontri, employed their prodigious woodworking skills to make the stage a reality.
In this scene, Joseph Lascaze, J.J. Jennings, and Darryll Bifano rehearse a scene on one of the stage’s 20 interlocking sections.
The Script
The production settled on a title: “Assassin’s Deed: Six Disks to Comicon.” It opens with Marty McQueen (Brian Taylor) and his friend, Steve, 20-something-year-old slackers and consummate nerds with plans to attend the massive Comicon Convention at the Los Angeles Civic Center. I asked my friend, Joseph Lascaze — who was Managing Director and an actor in the play — to describe Comicon for us:
“Comicon is a ginormous gathering of geeks, nerds, and hardcore comic book fans so they can live out their fantasies and wear tight spandexy costumes, and, for once in their lives, be the cool kids in the house if even for just a day.”
Sorry, Comicon fans. So much for a spirit of inclusivity! You might remember Joseph Lascaze from one of several appearances at Beyond These Stone Walls including, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.” Joseph was entirely out of his urban culture element in this play’s celebration of nerdhood, but he lent his considerable talents for both writing and direction.
Back to Marty and Steve. In the opening scene, Marty — played masterfully by Brian Taylor — is pleading with his Mom to let him and Steve borrow her 1994 Dodge Caravan to go to Comicon. “But Moooom!” Marty pleaded, “We’ve been planning this for mooooonths!”
In the photo below, Nick Sizemore (rear) and Kyle Buffum (front left) actually built a wooden model of a 1994 Dodge Caravan which ended up being a co-star in the play. Nick and Kyle are impressive guys. They were the creative anchors and the behind-the-scenes guys who got things done.
Nick Sizemore was Technical manager for the production while he and Kyle Buffum doubled as “stunt drivers” (They powered the van “Fred Flintstone style” while hidden unseen in its trunk). They also doubled as President Trump’s Secret Service protection detail in a number of scenes. You will easily spot them in suits and dark glasses in the cast photos. [They did a better job than the Secret Service performance in Butler, PA.] Kyle made the ultimate sacrifice. He cut his hair to make the Trumpian hairpiece. It’s not easy to see in the photos under Trump’s MAGA cap, but it’s there.
Credit: KCNA via Reuters
The Super-Hoopinator
The scene switches to North Korea and the home of reclusive dictator, Kim Jong Un. He announces to his generals that he has a nefarious plan for the control of all of Korea. He has developed a secret weapon — “The Super-Hoopinator” — which he plans to unleash upon an unsuspecting world. The Super-Hoopinator will transfer into Kim Jong Un all the skills of anyone who activates it.
Kim Jong’s nefarious plan begins with his challenge to then-South Korean President Moon Jae-Un for a one-on-one, winner-takes-all basketball game for the control of a united Korea. Just before the game, Kim Jong has a plan to invite his good friend, former American basketball star Dennis Rodman, to activate the Super-Hoopinator thus transferring into Kim Jong all Dennis Rodman’s basketball skills.
To hide this plan, Kim Jong embeds his Super-Hoopinator onto six Lord of the Rings DVDs. However, Michael Cootier (played by Donald Levesque) is an American conspiracy theorist and skilled computer hacker. He has hacked into Kim Jong’s security sites to discover and divert the plan.
Assisted by his friend, hacker, rapper, and double agent Freddy McCombes (Joseph Lascaze), Mike and Freddy hacked into the Lord of the Rings DVDs and reprogrammed the Super-Hoopinator device to instead activate in Kim Jong an incessant impulse to dance and wear a wedding dress. [Don’t blame me! I didn’t write this!]
President Trump and the Secret Service
The scene switches to the White House and the Oval Office. President Donald Trump is being briefed on a report from the intelligence communities who had a mole planted in Kim Jong’s house staff. They, too, have learned of Kim Jong’s nefarious plan. To catch Kim Jong in the act, the White House issues an invitation to meet in America.
However, Mike the Hacker has also set out to foil Kim Jong. When he remotely reprogrammed the DVDs containing the Super-Hoopinator, he also programmed a North Korean security site to ship them to six different locations in the United States. The disks end up in the homes of nerds, hackers, and Mike’s fellow conspiracy theorists all of whom are in Mom’s van on their way to the Comicon Convention.
Kim Jong Un and his security staff discover the missing DVDs and decipher Mike’s computer hack. They send out a team of four assassins who leave a cross-country body count in their desperation to find the DVDs. Meanwhile, Kim Jong heads to Los Angeles and Comicon with Dennis Rodman to put the plot back on schedule. Only now, Kim Jong has added a plot to use the Super-Hoopinator on all Americans who will become puppets under his control.
The White House also learns the plans for the DVDs. President Trump and the Secret Service head to Comicon to head off everyone else: Kim Jong, his team of assassins, and Mike and Freddy. In the scene below, President Trump and the Secret Service have the nerds and conspiracy theorist-hackers detained in one room.
Nerd Marty (Brian Taylor) is on the left in his Star Trek Comicon uniform with his phaser on stun. Hacker Mike (Donald Levesque) is on the far right disguised as Star Wars’ bounty hunter Boba Fett to fit in at Comicon. Double-agent Freddy (Joseph Lascaze) is seated to my right along with Kim Jong’s subdued assassins. I remember whispering to Joseph in this scene, “Some of our nerds are not acting!”
The Final Scene
President Trump and the hackers end up being jointly responsible for foiling Kim Jong and saving the world. When the Super-Hoopinator is unleashed, instead of defeating President Moon for control of all Korea, Kim Jong is transformed into a compulsive dancer in a wedding dress.
Trump announces that the world is safe for democracy once again, and in a final scene (below), he kicks off his 2020 presidential campaign with a rousing speech. The President exits the stage to a standing ovation from an exhausted crowd of 500 who spent the previous ninety minutes laughing uncontrollably.
In the real world, as this all played out on stage, President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un came to an historic agreement. However, this time it was President Trump who was thwarted. The cast and crew of Assassins Deed, Six Disks to Comicon now take full credit for settling the Korean crisis.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: If you are in the United States, please plan to cast your vote on November 5. Please do not let any amount of disillusionment cancel your voice in support of democracy. Please also share this post. You may also like these other “prison-based” posts from Father Gordon MacRae:
The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Some Older Songs
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
One Nation under God: The Future of the U.S. Supreme Court
‘One Nation under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance by joint resolution of Congress in 1954. Today some forces want it gone, and God gone with it.
‘One Nation under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance by joint resolution of Congress in 1954. Today some forces want it gone, and God gone with it.
August 7, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Editor’s Note: We are revisiting a post originally published before the U.S. presidential election of 2020 and its many unresolved issues.
The title of this post should be recognizable to just about every resident of the United States over the age of fifty, citizen or not. It comes, of course, from the Pledge of Allegiance, an oath with a storied history. The idea for such an oath began with an editor of The Youth’s Companion, a magazine published in the United States from 1827 to 1912. The first official use of the Pledge was in a ceremony honoring Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1892 by a proclamation of President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican.
In 1954, by a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the words, “one nation under God” were added to the Pledge to wide popular acclaim. Now, 66 years later, some members of Congress refuse to include those words in any recitation of the pledge. Some decline to recite the Pledge at all. Rioting mobs are tearing down any statue that even looks like it might represent Christopher Columbus. The name of God is the prey of activist judges.
Thus comes the beginning of the end of “one nation under God,” and perhaps even of the nation itself. In the midst of all this chaos, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020 leaving the administration of President Donald Trump with a third nomination to the nation’s highest court and a reshaping of the Court unprecedented in modern times. This mirrors the real priority of the election of 2016, a fact that I wrote about then in “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.” It opens eyes now just as it did then.
There is a lot at stake in this upcoming election [and especially in the current administration that has vowed to radically reshape the Supreme Court along ideological lines through term limits and stacking the Court with additional justices.] If you find it a challenge to read such a political position from a Catholic priest, well, “For Zion’s sake I cannot keep silent. For Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest” (Isaiah 62:1). At the heart of all this there are urgent considerations for human rights, religious freedom, and Catholic moral teaching.
At least consider the unfiltered voices of your fellow Americans that have not been strained through the sieve of the mainstream news media’s surrender to the deep political left. In 2020, the fourth year of the current President’s first term in office, the highly respected Gallup Poll conducted a broad scientific survey of the level of trust Americans invest in the institutions of government and civil society. This survey came in the midst of a global pandemic and the high anxiety of a highly contentious election year. The results are very different from what you are hearing from CNN or MSNBC.
Churches and organized religion ranked near the top in overall public trust with 42-percent reporting a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust. Only 28-percent reported having “very little.” The U.S. Military came out at the very top with 72-percent of Americans who report having “very high” trust and only 8-percent having “very little.” Despite all the bad news, the nation’s police also fared better than expected. 48-percent of Americans reported having “very high” trust while 33-percent reported “very little.”
Political institutions were the most interesting. In 2020, four years into President Trump’s first, and so far only term, 42-percent of Americans reported having a “very high” trust level for his office while 32-percent reported having “very little.” A look at the same Gallup Poll in the fourth year of Barack Obama’s first term revealed lower numbers with 32-percent having “high” trust and 35-percent “very little.” You won’t hear this on CNN.
Nancy Pelosi’s Congress Tipping Further Left
In the image above, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is seen dramatically tearing up the President’s 2020 State of the Union address. The lower House of Congress had capitulated to the progressive left and handed over unprecedented control to the newer members who self-identified as socialists. Their unofficial voice has been Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who announced in a news conference in 2020 that “We are confident that President Joe Biden can be guided further left.” [The decision not to run for reelection in 2024 made his turn left a moot point. With the current Vice President now running in place of Joe Biden for a second term, the threatened push to turn further left is no longer necessary because she is already much further left than the president Americans elected in 2020.]
Of interest, the 2020 Gallup Poll Trust Survey responded to this. Only 13-percent of Americans reported having “high” or “very high” trust in Congress while 48-percent reported having “very little.” American’s trust level in the Congress of 2020 controlled by Democrats was even lower than trust in the mainstream news media which was at its historical all-time lowest point. Newspapers earned the high trust of only 24-percent of Americans while “very little” trust came in at 35-percent. Television news fared even worse. Only 19-percent reported having “high” trust while 43-percent reported “very little” or none at all. You won’t hear this on CNN either.
The 2020 sharp leftward tilt of Congress toward socialism is of grave concern if it drags the Supreme Court along with it. President Trump’s 2020 conservative nominee had been met with threats by Congress to retaliate if Democrats remain in control and gain the Senate and the White House as well. The most vocal threat is that they will “pack the Court” by increasing its number and filling the additional seats with liberal judges. [That is no longer an idle threat. The present Democratic nominee for president has already identified it as an urgent goal.]
This would be disastrous for America. The first Supreme Court was seated with five justices in 1789. In 1837, Congress increased the number to nine. That number was arrived at to make political stalemates very unlikely. The nine-justice Court has been a fixture in Washington for nearly two centuries. One of the most vocal criticisms of the Court in recent years has been the presence of “activist judges” in the lower courts who “legislate from the bench.”
The Supreme Court’s most important responsibility is to decide cases that raise questions of Constitutional interpretation. This is called “Judicial Review” and it places the Supreme Court in a pivotal role in the American political system. It is the ultimate authority for applying the Constitution in the most important issues facing the country. It is disastrous if activist judges find their way onto the Supreme Court. Examples of “Legislating from the Bench” came in two cases before the modern Court.
In 1973, the Supreme Court did not find a right to abortion in the Constitution, and so it invented one and placed it there, usurping the role of Congress and the votes of the American people. This happened again in 2015 in “Obergefell v Hodges,” the same-sex marriage ruling. In the (5-4) split decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a blistering dissent accusing the liberal judges of placing a constitutional right to marriage in the Constitution when it simply is not there.
Sheldon Whitehouse and the Judiciary Committee
Shortly after [then-]President Trump announced his decision to put forward a nominee for the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, some in Congress and the Senate went into high gear to denounce it. The players knew very well what the real issue of precedent was. When President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy in his last months as President in 2016, a vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, the Republican controlled Senate declined to consider it. The Republicans were in the right (no pun intended) on the matter of precedent.
The controlling authority in 2016 was the precedent that, since 1888, the Senate does not confirm a nominee in an election year with a divided government. In 2016, the White House was occupied by a Democrat while the majority in the Senate was Republican. The Senate Democrats know, but hoped you did not know, that it was Joe Biden himself who popularized this exception. As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1992, Senator Biden urged President George H.W. Bush to refrain from making a Supreme Court nomination during that election year because the “divided government” meant there was an “absence of a nationwide consensus.” Without such a consensus on constitutional philosophy, Senator Biden insisted, “action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election is over.”
A divided government was the case again in 2016 so the “Biden Rule” applied. It was not the case in 2020. Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself argued that in the final months of a president’s term in office, “the president is still the president,” and he has a constitutional mandate to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, had the most suspect response:
“Though we [n Congress] strongly believe this is a matter of the gravest importance for our nation, for life, liberty, and the pursuit of our agenda, it would be wrong to fill this with just a few months left of this presidency.”
Even overlooking the fact that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of our agenda” is not exactly what the Bill of Rights had in mind, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have concluded that the election is already over and your voices have already been heard. In “Ginsburg Succession Battle Shows Hypocrisy Is an Enduring Norm,” Wall Street Journal Editor-at-Large Gerard Baker was as put off as I was:
“The reason millions of voters swallowed their doubts about Donald Trump in 2016 was that they believed their voices had too often been ignored… It has been clear all summer that there is an emerging progressive consensus [in Congress] that considers the nation’s institutions, traditional values, and even its history to be fundamentally illegitimate.”
— The Wall Street Journal, Sep. 22, 2020
But no one left me more uneasy about the road ahead in 2020 than Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer asked him a pointed question (Sep. 22) about the obliteration of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s due process rights in the his confirmation hearing. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse responded that Kavanaugh had “a credible accusation” against him that overshadowed those hearings in what I could only conclude to be a sham trial. In welcoming the newly seated Justice Kavanaugh to the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg referred to that process as “a highly partisan show.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of no more than being accused. I, for one, can relate to such an albatross around my neck. The uncorroborated and unsubstantiated allegations were exploited by Senator Whitehouse and others on his committee in a vicious partisan display that voters have not forgotten.
What made these claims “credible” in the eyes of Senator Whitehouse? Sheldon Whitehouse spent his high school years at St. Paul’s School, an elite prep school in Concord, New Hampshire with historic ties to the Episcopal church. Its alumni list looks like a who’s who of Washington politics. The school has been the subject of multiple grand jury investigations for alleged sexual assaults by both students and faculty dating back several decades. I wrote about the fallout from this in “Grand Jury, St Paul’s School and the Diocese of Manchester.” If Sheldon Whitehouse were to be accused today, should that fact alone make the claims “credible?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh might be among the first to defend his due process rights.
So what sort of witch hunt were we in for when [then-]President Trump put forth the name of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for nomination in 2020? The fact that she is Catholic had already become an unconstitutional religion test applied by members of the Judiciary Committee in 2020. In 2018, a non profit progressive organization called “Demand Justice” spent $5 million building opposition to Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Court. How much of this money paid for false accusations? The Wall Street Journal reports that when asked if the group donated to Senator Whitehouse, he responded, “hope so!” In “Questions for Senator Whitehouse,” (Review & Outlook, Sep. 22, 2020) the Journal concluded:
“Mr Whitehouse is trying to stifle the donations and speech of his political opponents. The least he can do is set an example by disclosing his own dark money network and its plans to undermine judicial independence.”
Epilogue
Jumping back to 2024, President Joe Biden and presidential candidate Kamala Harris have both announced a plan to form an exploratory committee to reform the Court through term limits, additional seats on the Court, and the same threats that would re-make the Supreme Court into just another political action committee. Joe Biden, the proponent of term limits for the Court spent 48 years in Congress. For those who care about the state of Justice in America, I believe this effort must be halted.
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts:
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Trump at Mount Rushmore, Lincoln at the Emancipation
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States. If the progressive woke earthly powers had their way, Donald Trump may have been the last.
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States. If the progressive woke earthly powers had their way, Donald Trump may have been the last.
July 17, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Over the fifteen years that I have been writing a weekly post for this blog, the month of July has always been a bit of a disappointment. As many readers know, there is no air conditioning where I live. Residing on the top floor of a four-story dormitory setting where 24 grown men must share one bathroom with two toilets, the stifling heat, lack of activity and seasonally subdued reader attention have all combined to strip away much of my enthusiasm to write in July.
So I chose an older post as a summer rerun for this week. July is also often a slow news time. I chose this post just before the events of July 13 when a political rally for Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania exploded in news across the globe. I had wrestled with whether I should rethink my choice for this week’s post.
After I first wrote it a few months before the 2020 election, I was assailed in messages from a few readers for having the audacity to write of him without the usual vague sense of vitriol that so much of the rest of the media utilizes for all things Trump.
“Vitriol” is an interesting word with a strange etymology that results in nearly opposite usages. It refers to bitter or corrosive feelings about someone or something. In chemistry, vitriol is another name for sulfuric acid which can corrode metal. But in another usage it refers to having the properties of glass, transparent and resilient.
I hope you don’t have the impression that I like Donald Trump, or that I now endorse him for president. Priests should probably refrain from such things even though we all have opinions like everyone else. What I do like is the idea of Donald Trump, of the fact that a non-politician with no apparent appreciation for Washington, DC politics-as-usual can be elected president against overwhelming odds. Only in America!
What I do not like, at all, is a mindset that has grown in U.S. politics that is mercilessly set against him. If you turned on MSNBC News anytime of day or night before the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania you would witness exactly what I mean. Even MSNBC has lightened up just a bit, but only because it is politically insensitive to attack a presidential candidate who has just been shot.
I support the right of U.S. citizens to resist a domineering woke agenda that seeks to nullify your vote with its own prejudice by denouncing Donald Trump at every turn. It is for voters, and not the elite of Washington politics, or the entrenched progressive news media, to decide this coming election. Every possible subversive effort has been employed to confiscate your will and turn your vote against this man. It is not right and it is certainly not American. And when all the lawfare and rhetoric failed to circumvent the will of the people and steal this election, the unthinkable happened. Those subversive earthly powers utilized a delusional young man with a rifle and a bullet to ultimately do what all the pundits could not do.
Donald Trump survived — seemingly miraculously — and now it seems that the rest just enters into history. History is the real subject of this 2020 post that I have chosen to rewrite and update for this 2024 summer rerun:
Trump at Mount Rushmore, Lincoln at the Emancipation
American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his research into the power of “availability bias,” a sort of groupthink in which a proposition is widely accepted as true merely because it has been repeated in the media. Kahneman’s research challenged the long-held view that people make decisions rationally, based on their own self-interest. His research demonstrated that groupthink can result in irrational decisions that are contrary to self-interest.
The threat of groupthink, though not in so many words, was at the heart of George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, about a future totalitarian society in which human will is controlled by established norms. Since Orwell wrote his landmark novel, studies have shown that decision-making groups often fall victim to groupthink, a phenomenon that excessively demands group concurrence and condemns dissent. Members blindly convince themselves that the group’s position is correct by suppressing all evidence to the contrary. It sounds very familiar.
We have heard a multitude of examples in recent months. Some of our leaders have embraced the groupthink, for example, that Covid-19 is easily spread among Catholics at Mass but not at all among mass protesters, plunderers, and rioters in a “woke” demand to cleanse history. Any dissent from the approved doctrine is met with group condemnation.
History would call this “The March of Folly.” My favorite among the many historians I have read is Barbara Tuchman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And my favorite among her books is The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. In it, Dr. Tuchman analyzes four turning points in history that illustrate a group’s actions against self-interest.
Her choices for this analysis were: (1) the Trojan War; (2) the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance Popes (I wrote of this one in “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican”); (3) the loss of the British loss of the American Colonies by King George III, and (4) the United States’ folly in Vietnam. Barbara Tuchman’s Introduction contains a wise caveat that should be the hallmark of every historian:
“Nothing is more unfair than to judge men of the past with the ideas of the present.”
— The March of Folly, p.5
Were Barbara Tuchman alive in some distant future, I wonder if she might add a fifth turning point: The folly of 2020, the point at which America turned on itself by destroying its monuments to history, committing on a national scale the same unfair judgment of the past that Tuchman described above.
History must be clearly understood by every generation lest it repeat itself. When the Third Reich came to power in 1939 Germany, it was all about amassing power by convincing the people that certain of their neighbors, and certain of their neighbors’ ideas, were dangerous. Books were burned. Monuments were destroyed by fired-up mobs. Businesses were looted and burned to the ground. The past was stripped away from the present.
An Independence Day Address at Mount Rushmore
The usual critics were loudly vocal, but not exactly truthful, about President Trump’s speech on the eve of Independence Day 2020 before a crowd gathered at Mount Rushmore. The memorial features the heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. The impressively massive sculpture was carved into the granite rim of Mount Rushmore 500 feet above the valley floor. Each face is 60 feet tall. The monument was begun in 1927 and completed in 1941 as the United States entered World War II.
The rhetoric surrounding President Trump’s appearance there has been astonishing. The vile disparagement that took place among much of the U.S. news media is evidenced in these headlines:
“At Mt. Rushmore, Trump Uses Fourth of July Celebration to Stoke a Culture War”
— Los Angeles Times
“Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message”
— New York Times
“Trump Pushes Racial Divisions, Flouts Virus Rules at Rushmore”
— Associated Press
“At Mount Rushmore, Trump Exploits Social Divisions, Warns of ‘Left-Wing Cultural Revolution’ in Dark Speech Ahead of Independence Day”
— Washington Post
“What really struck me about the speech... was that [Trump] spent more time worried about honoring dead confederates. [He] spent all his time talking about dead traitors.”
— Senator Tammy Duckworth at CNN
The claims from Senator Duckworth seemed the most puzzling of all. Even The New York Times, no fan of this President, reported that Mr. Trump “avoided references to the symbols of the Confederacy.” In a later article, the Times added, “[Trump] avoided specifically mentioning anything related to Confederate monuments!” He never mentioned any of the “dead confederates” cited by Senator Duckworth who appears not to have actually heard the speech.
During the presidential primaries of 2016, some of the same media reported on Senator Bernie Sanders’ visit to Mount Rushmore. Of the monument itself, Mr. Sanders was quoted: “It really does make one proud to be an American.” When Mr. Trump spoke there on the eve of Independence Day 2020, a CNN reporter characterized it as a speech “in front of a monument to two slave owners on land wrestled away from Native Americans.”
Somehow between 2016 and 2020, Mount Rushmore — and America itself — became a symbol of oppression to the media left. So did Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal’s assessment was vastly different, however.
In “Trump at Mount Rushmore,” a lead editorial of July 6, 2020, editors commended the President for delivering “one of the best speeches of his presidency”:
“Contrary to the media reporting, the America Mr. Trump described is one of genuine racial equality and diversity. He highlighted the central idea of the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal.’ As he rightly put it, ‘These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom’ that included the abolition of slavery.”
In a published Letter to the Editor on July 6, 2020, one Wall Street Journal reader wrote that after following all the anti-Trump Facebook rhetoric about the Mount Rushmore speech, he conducted a little experiment. He posted an excerpt of the speech on Facebook, but without attribution. The passage was:
“We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglass. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, General George Patton, the great Louis Armstrong, Alan Shepherd, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali. And only America could have produced them all. No other place.”
The passage merited a barrage of Facebook “likes” from the same people who had been condemning the President’s Mount Rushmore speech — obviously without ever actually hearing or reading it.
The Emancipation Memorial
Another debate has been raging over a longstanding Washington, DC monument in Lincoln Park known as the “Emancipation Memorial.” The monument was dedicated on that site in 1876 by Frederick Douglass, a former slave who campaigned for the abolition of slavery. His widely celebrated autobiography described his life as a slave in the South, as a fugitive in the North, and as a prominent African American orator, journalist, and antislavery leader.
In later life Frederick Douglass worked for full civil rights for African Americans while holding several U.S. government positions. Despite his dedication of the Emancipation Monument, he had misgivings about its design. The current controversy over the monument unearthed a previously unknown letter in which Douglass wrote that the former slave depicted there, “while rising, is still on his knees.”
Two Letters in The Wall Street Journal (July 7, 2020) captured the opposing views of the controversial monument. One writer knew its history. The other judged it solely by impressions of the present when separated from its history. I leave it to you to decide which expresses the monument’s original meaning:
WSJ READER 1: “The image shows a clear hierarchy of power — Abraham Lincoln with elegant clothes dominating Archer Alexander [a former slave] wearing only a piece of cloth... No back story, facts or prestigious titles you wave in our faces will convince people to see ‘emancipation’ there. What might have been questionably allowed in 1892 isn’t acceptable now.”
WSJ READER 2: “The scene depicted actually happened. Admiral David Dixon Porter accompanied President Lincoln to Richmond to accept the surrender of the Confederacy, and recounted the story in his 1885 memoir. Lincoln was recognized by hundreds of newly freed slaves who crowded him. When one fell to the ground at his feet, Lincoln said, ‘Do not kneel to me. You must kneel only to God and thank Him for your liberty. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to all others. It is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years.’ It was Admiral Porter’s account that inspired the statue’s design. Little more than one week later, Lincoln was assassinated.”
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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this important and timely post. We also recommend these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Neither Donald Trump nor I Should Wear That Scarlet Letter!
Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights
Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables
The Hamas Assault on Israel and the Emperor Who Knew Not God
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Follow the Money: Another Sinister Sex Abuse Grand Jury Report
Targeting Holy Week and Easter, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a grand jury report on unproven decades-old claims of abuse by Catholic priests.
Targeting Holy Week and Easter, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown released a grand jury report on unproven decades-old claims of abuse by Catholic priests.
April 26, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
In Baltimore, Maryland, excluding the rest of the state, there were 1,018 victims of gun violence in 2022. Of that number, 338 are classified as homicides in Baltimore City alone. There have been 80 additional homicides in the first three months of 2023. The State of Maryland currently has 74 unsolved cold case homicides. And yet, the Maryland Attorney General invested vast resources in a grand jury report released this year just as Catholics the world over prepared to honor Holy Week and Easter. The Wall Street Journal carried the story on Holy Thursday by journalists Scott Calvert and Jon Kamp headlined: “Baltimore Archdiocese Long Allowed Abuse of Children, AG’s Report Says.” The article opened with a paragraph now painfully familiar to U.S. Catholics:
“BALTIMORE — Scores of priests and other people affiliated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused hundreds of children over more than 60 years, and church officials often protected the perpetrators while keeping their crimes a secret, Maryland’s attorney general said in a new report.”
News coverage of the recent grand jury indictment of former President Donald Trump by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg has illuminated the grand jury process with lots of commentary by legal minds. You have likely heard it said that “a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich.” It means that a grand jury is an entirely one-sided prosecutorial affair. There is no cross-examination of witnesses, no testimony from the accused, often even no testimony from an accuser, and no defense of any kind. If the legal process stops there, as it did in the Maryland Grand Jury Report, accusations alone are the end of the road. Due process of law and the Bill of Rights are rescinded.
The WSJ article went on to point out that of the 156 alleged priestly perpetrators whose names came before this grand jury with accusations dating back to 1940, no one was indicted. Most of the subjects of the report are either long ago deceased or the statute of limitations has long since expired for any legitimate legal prosecution. Anyone who would dismiss this as “just a legal loophole” does not understand the U.S. justice system at all. These rules of due process were not adopted by the Founders to inhibit justice, but to protect it. Some allegations in the report stretch back more than 70 years with not a single claim that is less than two decades old. The report makes no effort to distinguish between allegation and proven conviction.
The WSJ article eventually got to the real agenda behind this story. On the same day the report was released, the Maryland legislature passed a bill that, if signed into law, will eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims — not for criminal prosecutions, but solely for civil claims to result in deep-pocket lawsuits for monetary settlements. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has orchestrated a great gift to the state’s tort lawyers each of whom will now stand to amass upwards of forty percent of every settlement or jury award. This is not about real abuse or real victims of abuse.
The legislation caps settlements or damage awards for private institutions at $1.5 million per claim. A lawyer who extorts such settlements could pocket up to $600,000 for each claim filed from hereon. Public institutions — such as public schools which receive a vastly larger number of abuse claims — are typically exempt from such legislation. The bill’s foremost target is the Catholic Church, an unjust reality that I once wrote about in a centerpiece article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, entitled, “Due Process for Accused Priests” (July/August 2009).
How an Attorney General Becomes a Governor
The Maryland Grand Jury Report is a mirror image of a similar report published in 2018 by then Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro who, in 2022, was predictably elected Governor. I wrote of that report and its shocking historical precedent in, “Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Joseph Goebbels in ‘The Reckoning.’”
After its initial shock value, and after its political rewards were reaped, the 2019 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report was widely exposed as a slanted and deeply unjust application of law. I expect the same will follow closer examination of the Maryland report. One journalist who has dismantled the credibility of the former is David F. Pierre, Jr., moderator of The Media Report and the author of four published books on the sexual abuse narrative in the Catholic Church. His most recent, The Greatest Fraud Never Told, is subtitled, False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church. Here is an excerpt:
“No other episode in the Catholic Church sex abuse story has more epitomized the reality of ‘groupthink’ mentality than the Pennsylvania grand jury report.... Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood before an enormous throng of national and international media to make the incredible claim that ‘over 300 priests’ in Pennsylvania had sexually abused ‘over 1,000 children’ in the last several decades while Church officials ‘did nothing’ and ‘covered it all up’.”
— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 34
Dave Pierre went on to describe how ‘every action by Shapiro was a masterful stroke of public relations media exposure to enhance his own public profile’ as he prepared to run for higher office:
“Shapiro called a local poster company to create a new, official-looking seal to be placed behind him as he broadcast his grand jury report to the world. Whereas the official seal of his office displayed ‘Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’ along the top and ‘Office of the Attorney General’ along the bottom, Shapiro not only flipped them, but replaced the words with ‘Attorney General Josh Shapiro’ so everyone across the globe could now easily see his name behind his head as he stood at the podium.”
— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 34
The Democratic Party has since thrown Josh Shapiro’s name out as a potential future White House contender. In just about every jurisdiction where a similar grand jury report was constructed and released to the public slamming the Catholic Church, the exploitation of an upward political trajectory was its unstated goal. David Pierre went on in his book to ask a most important question: “Were the claims from Shapiro’s grand jury report actually true?” “In a nutshell,” he wrote, “No, not at all.” He offers a simple explanation of what a grand jury is and does:
“A ‘grand jury report’ is simply a report written by government attorneys with a predetermined outcome. The folks in the [grand jury] are merely a formality, window dressing to make the entire matter legal. The jury does not actually investigate a case, question witnesses, or scrutinize all sides of a story. It simply listens to one-sided proceedings orchestrated by prosecutors. There is no fact-checking, no cross examination, and no due process.”
— The Greatest Fraud Never Told, p. 35
How Grand Jury Reports Defeat Justice
Multiple states have had grandstanding prosecutors harboring political ambitions propelled forward with sensationalized grand jury reports that singled out the Catholic Church and priesthood as some sort of special arena of historical child sexual abuse. But as my title implies, we should follow the money for an understanding of what drives this.
New Hampshire, the state from which I write, has been no exception. In 2003, a grand jury report here caused much damage to the state of due process for priests accused when the local Catholic bishop waived the rights of all the accused without their knowledge.
But when a New Hampshire attorney general went on to apply the same to a grand jury report on a local prestigious prep school with an alumni list that looks like a Who’s Who of Washington insiders, a local judge blocked publication of that grand jury report. In so doing, the judge acknowledged that a similar grand jury report on my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, should never have been published regardless of a Bishop’s signature waiving our due process rights.
NH Superior Court Judge Richard B. McNamara explained why in his Order entitled, “Re, Grand Jury, No. 217-2018-CV-00382.” This is a story that I wrote about in a widely read 2019 post, “Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.”
The following are pertinent excerpts from Judge McNamara’s Order:
“The grand jury is one of the oldest institutions of Anglo American law, and to some extent, one of the most problematic. The United States Supreme Court recently rejected the traditional view of the grand jury as an arm of the courts, describing it as a separate institution that has not been ‘textually assigned’ to any of the three branches of government described in the federal Constitution.
“The original purpose of the grand jury was not only to increase the number of criminal prosecutions but to enhance the King’s authority and indirectly to increase revenue for the Crown which received the property forfeited by persons accused of crimes. But by the 17th Century, English grand juries had begun to act as an institution that could shield the innocent from unfounded charges. By the time of the American Revolution, English law characterized the grand jury as one of the principal protections against arbitrary government prosecution.
“Yet by the middle of the 19th Century there was no longer a consensus regarding the value or appropriate function of the grand jury.... The late 19th Century concern that grand juries were inquisitorial procedures that pose a threat to individual liberty was reflected in language that the Constitution did not require states to institute felony prosecutions by grand jury and suggested that the earliest grand juries were little more than a mob.
“The prevailing view of the federal courts is that grand juries have no common law authority to make accusations against individuals falling short of an indictment... A grand jury report that does not result in an indictment but references supposed misconduct results in a quasi-official accusation of wrongdoing drawn from secret ex parte proceedings in which there is no opportunity available or presented for a formal defense.
“The Florida Supreme Court described a grand jury report finding a public official guilty of wrongdoing without affording him a trial as ‘not far removed from, and no less repugnant to traditions of fair play, than lynch law.’ (Report of Grand Jury, 93 So. 2d 99, 102 (Fla. 1957).
“In the public mind, accusation by report is indistinguishable from accusation by indictment and subjects those against whom it is directed to the same public condemnation ... as if they had been indicted. An indictment charges a violation of a known and certain public law, and is but the first step in a long process in which the accused may seek vindication through exercise of the right to a public trial, to a jury, to counsel, to confrontation of witnesses against him, and, if convicted, to an appeal. … A [grand jury] report, on the contrary, is at once an accusation and a final condemnation. Its potential for harm is incalculable.
“[This] Court respectfully disagrees with the [2003] decision to approve the [New Hampshire] Diocese-OAG Agreement [which] fulfilled none of the traditional purposes of the common law grand jury. Rather than investigation of crime, the report is a post hoc summary of information the grand jury considered, but did not indict on.
“Mark Twain famously said that a lie is half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become ever more efficient. An allegation of wrongdoing or impropriety based upon half-truths, illegally seized evidence or rumor, innuendo or hearsay may blight an individual’s life indefinitely.
“Accordingly, the Court DENIES the Office of the Attorney General Motion. The Attorney General may not produce any report that contains any material produced to the grand jury through subpoena or testimony or that is characterized as a ‘Grand Jury Report.’”
— Presiding Justice Richard B. McNamara August 12, 2019
Just two weeks before Judge McNamara issued that Order and published it, Bishop Peter A. Libasci of the Diocese of Manchester, of his own accord, published a list of 73 priests who had been accused and condemned in the 2003 Diocese of Manchester Grand Jury Report. Most of the priests on the list were long since deceased. None of them were afforded constitutional due process. Bishop Libasci cited “transparency” as his motive for publishing this list.
The motive of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown for releasing his one-sided report as Catholics observed Holy Week and Easter seems clear. What is less clear is the legal basis for such a report and especially for widely publishing it. The Maryland Attorney General’s Grand Jury Report should be seen in light of all of the above.
A lot of people, primarily lawyers and claimants, will profit greatly from this latest official state government travesty of justice, but it should not be the basis for whether or how you exercise your faith, or your membership in this Mystical Body that we call a Church. It should also never be the source of your own determination of any priest’s guilt or innocence.
This story is, as David F. Pierre Jr. has described it, The Greatest Fraud Never Told.
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To our readers: Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. Next week at Beyond These Stone Walls it is our privilege to welcome an internationally known expert in Canon Law on due process crisis in the priesthood. It is an excellent sequel to this post.
You may also be interested in these related links that beg to be read and shared:
Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Joseph Goebbels in ‘The Reckoning’
Grand Jury, St Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell
Covering unrelated stories of the trial of Cardinal George Pell and the notorious Hunter Biden laptop, Miranda Devine deserves a Pulitzer for journalistic integrity.
Covering unrelated stories of the trial of the late Cardinal George Pell and the notorious Hunter Biden laptop, Miranda Devine deserves a Pulitzer for journalistic integrity.
May 25, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
I never imagined that I would be writing a post with Cardinal George Pell and Hunter Biden’s notorious “Laptop from Hell ” sharing the same title. The connections are circumstantial, but once I stumbled upon them, I knew I had my title for this post.
In both stories, the mainstream news media brought little light, but lots of heat, while exposing little truth beyond its own vile bias. In the case of Cardinal Pell’s unjust imprisonment, much of the news media in both Australia and America embraced a wildly imaginative narrative filled with holes to presume his guilt with no evidence. Being sent to prison is by no means an indication of guilt. In the case of Hunter Biden, both mainstream media and social media teamed up to cover up the explosive story before the 2020 presidential election. It was a true account that citizens of a free and open society had a right to know.
In both stories, one journalist distinguished herself as a champion of journalistic courage and integrity for pursuing and publishing the truth despite immense pressure to adhere to the media’s availability bias. That journalist is Miranda Devine who covered the Pell case in Australia while single-handedly exposing the Hunter Biden laptop story for the New York Post.
Back in October, 2021, Ryan MacDonald wrote a post in these pages entitled, “Fr. Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell.” Ryan included in that post several pages from Cardinal Pell’s book, Prison Journal Volume 2 which was widely read across the globe.
The paragraphs that Ryan reprinted from the book were about me. I read them repeatedly, not because I like to see my name in print, but because I had a subconscious nagging sense that I was missing something. Then, just weeks ago, it struck me. In one paragraph, my name appears along with that of Miranda Devine. Why would that be important? It wasn’t at first, but in subsequent readings it leapt out at me. Here’s the story:
From the Cardinal Pell Journal
On May 15, 2019, three years to the day before typing this post, I published a carefully researched article entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Sheryl Collmer, a reader of this blog from Texas who writes for American Thinker and Catholic World Report, mailed a copy of my article to Cardinal Pell, then still in an Australian prison having lost his first appeal. From half a world away, Cardinal Pell pondered my article and then wrote about it on August 2, 2019 in the journal he kept in his cell. Here are excerpts:
“By a coincidence, today I received from Sheryl [Collmer], a regular correspondent from Texas, a copy of the 15 May 2019 post on the blog These Stone Walls written by Fr Gordon MacRae. The article was entitled, “Was Cardinal George Pell Convicted on Copycat Testimony?” Fr MacRae was convicted on 23 September 1994 and sentenced to sixty-seven years in a New Hampshire prison for crimes allegedly committed around 15 to 20 years previously. The allegations had no supporting evidence and no corroboration.”
Cardinal Pell went on in his journal to analyze my article and why I believed his trial was scripted from another unrelated case in the United States. A sensational and distorted account of that case appeared in both the U.S. and Australia in Rolling Stone magazine by a now disgraced former journalist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. In several paragraphs, Cardinal Pell described my 2019 article:
“Fr MacRae recounts extraordinary similarities between the accusations I faced and accusations of Billy Doe in Philadelphia which were published in Australia in 2011 in the magazine Rolling Stone, pointing out that there are far too many similarities in the stories for them to be explained by coincidence. The author of the 2011 Rolling Stone article was Sabrina Rubin Erdely, no longer a journalist, disgraced and discredited.
“In 2014 she had written, and provoked a storm which reached Obama’s White House, about ‘Jackie’ at the University of Virginia who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012 by seven men. As Fr MacRae points out, ‘The story was accepted as gospel truth once it appeared in print.’ Jackie’s account turned out to be a massive lie. A civil trial followed; the seven students were awarded $7.5 million in damages by the jury and Rolling Stone was found guilty of negligence and defamation.
“No one realized in 2015, when the allegations against me were first made to police, that the model for copycat allegations, or the innocent basis for the remarkable similarities, was also a fantasy or a fiction.”
Cardinal George Pell, Prison Journal Volume 2 : pp 57-60
Cardinal Pell did not know it at the time, but I had already posted articles on the story of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s dubious article about accusations against Philadelphia priests by the anonymous “Billy Doe” in 2011, and her equally dubious account of gang rape at the University of Virginia. The most recent of my articles was, “The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone.”
Now Comes Miranda Devine
After reading Cardinal Pell’s book, I set it aside happy to have been of some hope and encouragement during his unjust time of imprisonment. Cardinal Pell concluded in his journal:
“I am grateful to Fr MacRae for taking up my cause, as I am to many others. These include in North America George Weigel and Fr Raymond de Souza and here in Australia Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Fr Frank Brennan, and others behind the scenes.”
Prison Journal Volume 2, p. 60
Many months after reading Cardinal Pell’s journal, I took up another book ordered for me by a friend. It was Laptop from Hell (Post Hill Press 2021), a now notorious account by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine. My friend told me that the first printing sold out within weeks at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble so it was placed on backorder for me. It arrived in early March, 2022 and I began to read its shocking pages.
I immediately recognized its author, Miranda Devine, as the now famous New York Post columnist who nearly upended the U.S. presidential election in 2020. But I also knew that I had seen her name somewhere else. It turned out that it was in that passage from Cardinal Pell above. I was surprised to see both my name and that of Miranda Devine in the same paragraph.
I had not known until then that Ms. Devine wrote boldly in defense of Cardinal Pell against a tidal wave of progressive criticism in both Australia and the United States. Among her several articles on the Pell case was her last one, “Finally, Justice for George Cardinal Pell” published in the New York Post on April 7, 2020. Three weeks later I published, “From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”
There were several articles in the left-leaning Australian news media deeply critical of Ms. Miranda Devine for her defense of Cardinal Pell. She thus became, in my view, a champion of journalistic integrity. Such champions are few and far between now, but they keep alive the notion that fair, just, and courageous journalism is all that stands between us and the demise of democracy.
In the Bill of Rights, Freedom of the Press has long been regarded as fundamental to individual rights. Without a free media, a free society and democratic self-government would not be possible. Nonetheless, in October 2020, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and almost all network news media and social media banded together with an unprecedented decision to keep the American people from learning the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the presidential election.
I was in shock by this at the time. It was the sort of thing that happens during elections in any number of banana republics, but here it was, in a full court press, shamefully happening in the United States. As a result, the New York Post’ s Facebook and Twitter accounts were blocked and any mention of the laptop or its contents by thousands of users (including me) was censored.
Laptop from Hell got its title from a Twitter message of then President Donald Trump who read of some of its contents in the New York Post, the sole U.S. media outlet with the integrity to publish the story. Then President Trump’s Twitter account was also suspended.
I followed this story closely in October, 2020 as it was shamelessly suppressed and censored by most U.S. news and social media. The more it was suppressed, the more alarmed I became. As a 19-year-old in 1972, I was riveted to the Watergate story and the heroism of the Washington Post coverage by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The story led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and criminal charges for some senior White House staff. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for it while the names “Woodward and Bernstein” became synonymous with journalistic courage and integrity.
Hunter Biden’s Laptop
Now, a half century later, the same Washington Post was actively suppressing a story of government corruption of equal importance solely for political bias. The pre-election weeks of October 2020 should have caused an uproar over the revelations by Miranda Devine in the New York Post about the explosive contents of a laptop abandoned in a repair shop by the Democratic presidential nominee’s son and never retrieved. The White House and Democratic Party went into circle-the-wagons mode, and most of the news media, setting aside their primary role to be a nonpartisan check and balance on government, joined them there.
Hunter Biden’s laptop was not the only thing abandoned. Its potential impact before a hotly contested election resulted in the abandonment of the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press as well. Polls about trust and confidence in the news media were off the charts after Watergate, but reached an all-time low even before “Huntergate” when they bottomed out completely. In the most recent Pew Research Center survey of news journalists, in which I was invited to take part, American trust and confidence in the news media is under six percent.
The story told by Miranda Devine in Laptop from Hell is both utterly painful and painfully necessary. A web of lies, cover-ups and corruption drove Richard Nixon from the White House in his second term in 1974, but by covering up the Hunter Biden story in 2020, the news media interfered in a presidential election and now leaves a stunned nation with a scandal of equal measure after just one year of the Biden administration. It was not patriotism that did this. It was the opposite of patriotism. It was partisanship.
The laptop consists of thousands of emails, video clips, and other material produced by Hunter Biden, son of then Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic Nominee. The contents reveal a shocking influence-peddling scheme by Hunter Biden who received millions of dollars for arranging influence from his then Vice President father with foreign entities in Ukraine, Russia, and China.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Legislative Judiciary Committee Member Adam Schiff, and seemingly every member on the Democratic sides of the House and Senate who were asked, including fifty former intelligence officers sworn to uphold the Constitution, all agreed to knowingly propagate a massive lie: that the laptop story “had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.”
That well-rehearsed lie was repeated to the American people by the Democratic nominee as he stared into the camera during the second Presidential Debate. It should be alarming that it was President Trump, and not the news media moderator, who brought it up in the first place.
I waded into this story a bit when I posted “A Soap Opera at CNN Amid the Winds of War” some months ago. It was posted just as Vladimir Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine was in its early stages. I wrote in that post that if the slowly published contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop are true, the President is compromised in foreign policy regarding Russia, Ukraine and China. I was certainly not the first or the last to raise this concern. The best coverage came from the least impaired news media, The Epoch Times, and a March 23, 2022 op-ed by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke, “The Foreign Policy Ramifications of Hunter’s Emails.”
We only know about this story at all today thanks to the dogged pursuit of it by Miranda Devine and the New York Post. And in U.S. news coverage of the wrongly convicted and imprisoned George Cardinal Pell, Miranda Devine and the New York Post were singular in their expression of journalistic skepticism about the flawed case against him. Mercifully, all seven members of Australia’s High Court agreed. If there is a Pulitzer for journalistic courage and integrity, it should have Miranda Devine’s name on it.
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Note from the Editor: Please share this post. Father Gordon MacRae will mark forty years of priesthood on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost. Please join us here next week on June 1st for a special post as he reflects on those years in the most extraordinary circumstances. You may also like these related posts:
The Path of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone
From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell
Fr Gordon MacRae in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell
